Corporate Ladder Brewing Company has opened its German beer season, and the beer it chose to do it with is a returning Hefeweizen.
Business As Usual is pouring now at the Palmetto taproom at 5 percent ABV. The recipe is 60 percent German wheat and 40 percent German Pilsner malt, fermented with a Hefeweizen strain. The brewery describes the result as a balanced banana and clove character.
That grain split is worth pausing on. Wheat carries the majority of the bill here, which is where a Hefeweizen's soft body and persistent haze come from, and the German Pilsner malt is doing structural work underneath rather than adding flavor of its own. The banana and clove the brewery points to are not ingredients. They come from the yeast - esters and phenols thrown off during fermentation, in a style where the strain is effectively the recipe's third major component. It is one of the few beers where naming the yeast tells a drinker more than naming the hops would.
Corporate Ladder is framing it as easy drinking and classic, and the brewery's own line on the name is that this is "exactly the kind of beer that makes business as usual feel like a pretty good plan."
The release arrived in a four-beer drop alongside Growth Rate, a 7 percent DDH IPA, the 6.1 percent Festbier Airing of Grievances, and a returning Dessert Station: Pumpkin Cheesecake.
Business As Usual is available on draft and in 16 ounce four-packs to go, with online ordering for taproom pickup.
Source & Editorial
JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.